On The Leaders' Lounge with Alec Lynch
Good leaders focus on the future.
Alec Lynch is Founder and CEO of DesignCrowd.com and BrandCrowd.com, two products that facilitate accessible design services for entrepreneurs and small business leaders around the world.
Tell us about DesignCrowd. What makes it unique?
DesignCrowd operates two websites - DesignCrowd.com and BrandCrowd.com
DesignCrowd is a marketplace for design. What makes it unique is our crowdsourcing business model that allows our small business customers to access over 1 million designers from around the world.
BrandCrowd is a design platform for small businesses. Entrepreneurs can use BrandCrowd to design anything for their business from logos and business cards to letterheads and LinkedIn posts. What makes it unique is our library of logo templates - we have the largest logo maker library in the world.
How did DesignCrowd come about?
I started DesignCrowd at the age of 23 from my family home in Sydney. I had a laptop and 3 credit cards. Today we have raised over $20m in venture capital, we have over 80 staff working across both DesignCrowd.com and BrandCrowd.com.
No doubt you’ve had many people help you along the way. How do you manage to get the most out of them?
I’ve been lucky to get a lot of help along the way. In my first year after starting the business, friends and family loaned me $30,000 which helped keep it afloat.
When it comes to staff - hiring is the most important step. If you hire great people, then many other things as a leader become easier.
What's the best career or professional advice you ever received?
Good leaders focus on the future.
Have you had mentors along the way? If so, how have they influenced you?
I’ve been very lucky to have a number of great mentors. They’ve helped me identify where I should focus my time and important changes the business needed to make in order to be more successful.
Define ‘media’:
Media is anything that helps communicate one-to-many and can be anything from a blog or podcast to television. To me, when you’re in business, media is a tool to get your product in front of potential customers.
What’s your own personal continuous improvement journey been like? What drives you?
I enjoy building new things, working with cool products and solving difficult problems with smart people that I like.
Finally, what advice do you have for emerging Australian designers, wishing to establish and develop a prosperous career in design?
Get online.
Setup your own website to promote yourself (whether it’s a portfolio / bio site or a website where you sell something).
Get yourself out there on other websites (whether they be marketplaces or Instagram).
Think about ways to design things that you could sell again and again online.
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